Just got back from SPX yesterday!  It was a lot of fun, and I'm sure everyone in my group got a lot of good experience since this was our first time going and exhibiting there.  Met a bunch of cool people and got a lot of cool comics!  The ride up and back was thankfully uneventful and the hotel stay ended up very ideal since they were able to get us double beds (after saying we could only have a king sized before) and a mini-fridge at no extra charge.  We brought a bunch of perishable foods with us hoping for the fridge, so I'm really glad we got one!

Both days, we all (me, Amanda Kahl, and Kyle Magnan) spent a lot of time at the booth, but between the three of us, we had a lot of time to go look around.  And while we weren't able to move all of our merchandise, I'm happy to say that we were able to move all of the Festering Romance pins and previews except for 3 of the previews that I kept for myself!  So, that means about 150 copies of the Festering Romance preview are out there circulating!  I hope everyone who got a copy reads through, enjoys it, and looks forward to seeing the finished book next year!

I think I'll post a more detailed report of what I saw and picked up later, but for now, all I can say is that I'm definitely looking forward to the conventions I'll be going to next year!  I hope to see everyone again at San Diego Comic Con 2009 and SPX 2009!

Last month, Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter posted a list of 50 things every comics collection should have. Going through the list, it kind of makes you sort out your own comic collection in your mind, so I thought I may as well participate and see what I have to hold against this list.

items in plain text: I don't have
items in BOLD: I have
items in italics: I have a little

1. Something From The ACME Novelty Library
2. A Complete Run Of Arcade

3. Any Number Of Mini-Comics
A few here and there from various sources. Probably the first one I got was Watasin's Adventures of A-Girl.

4. At Least One Pogo Book From The 1950s
5. A Barnaby Collection
6. Binky Brown and the Holy Virgin Mary
7. As Many Issues of RAW as You Can Place Your Hands On

8. A Little Stack of Archie Comics
In my case, a large stack of Archies...

9. A Suite of Modern Literary Graphic Novels
From Tom's examples, I have Black Hole, It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken, Fun Home, and Ghost World. I'm sure I have many others that fit into this category though...

10. Several Tintin Albums

11. A Smattering Of Treasury Editions Or Similarly Oversized Books
Complete Calvin & Hobbes, Complete Far Side, Absolute Watchmen

12. Several Significant Runs of Alternative Comic Book Series
I have complete runs of Dirty Plotte and Hate.

13. A Few Early Comic Strip Collections To Your Taste

14. Several "Indy Comics" From Their Heyday
This and #12 are a bit similar, as I've never been totally sure of the divide between "indie" and "alternative." I guess for indie, offhand I can think of my run of THB and Dork.

15. At Least One Comic Book From When You First Started Reading Comic Books
I started out on Betty & Veronica, and I'm sure I have that first issue I ever bought of B&V back in my dad's house.

16. At Least One Comic That Failed to Finish The Way It Planned To

17. Some Osamu Tezuka
Some Phoenix and Metropolis

18. The Entire Run Of At Least One Manga Series
I have a bunch of these, but for example: Kodocha, Paradise Kiss, Peach Girl, Magic Knight Rayearth, Parasyte (old TP version, now collecting the Del Rey), Cardcaptor Sakura, Gunsmith Cats, Club 9 (TPBs and Super Manga Blast issues)

19. One Or Two 1970s Doonesbury Collections
20. At Least One Saul Steinberg Hardcover
21. One Run of A Comic Strip That You Yourself Have Clipped

22. A Selection of Comics That Interest You That You Can't Explain To Anyone Else
I feel I should say I have some of these, but I think I can find at least one person who can "get" why I like a certain series even if they don't like it themselves. If this refers to not being able to explain to someone else why they should like it, a definite yes.

23. At Least One Woodcut Novel

24. As Much Peanuts As You Can Stand
I have a small collection of old Peanuts put out before the Fantagraphics complete collection. Since that's the only one I ever cared to buy, I guess that's all I can "stand."

25. Maus

26. A Significant Sample of R. Crumb's Sketchbooks
If you count all the sketchbook material reprinted in The Complete Crumb, count me in. I have every collection but 13 & 14.

27. The original edition of Sick, Sick, Sick.
28. The Smithsonian Collection Of Newspaper Comics
29. Several copies of MAD
30. A stack of Jack Kirby 1970s Comic Books
31. More than a few Stan Lee/Jack Kirby 1960s Marvel Comic Books

32. A You're-Too-High-To-Tell Amount of Underground Comix
If the Complete Crumb collections and run of Weirdo count, yes.

33. Some Calvin and Hobbes
I have the hardcover set.

34. Some Love and Rockets
I have Locas, Palomar, and the TPBs that occur after those collections.

35. The Marvel Benefit Issue Of Coober Skeber

36. A Few Comics Not In Your Native Tongue
A complete run of the new Moto Hagio Perfect Selection, a Shigeru Sugiura book, and some Sailor Moons.

37. A Nice Stack of Jack Chick Comics

38. A Stack of Comics You Can Hand To Anybody's Kid
The Archies, Magic Knight Rayearth, Cardcaptor, and Gon.

39. At Least A Few Alan Moore Comics
The Killing Joke, V for Vendetta, Watchmen.

40. A Comic You Made Yourself
Minis, minis, sequential art homework, and soon to be published pro work.

41. A Few Comics About Comics
Scott Mccloud books, Eisner books, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga, Wimbledon Green.

42. A Run Of Yummy Fur

43. Some Frank Miller Comics
Batman: Year One, Daredevil: Born Again, Dark Knight Returns

44. Several Lee/Ditko/Romita Amazing Spider-Man Comic Books

45. A Few Great Comics Short Stories
"Big Man" & "Minnie's 3rd Love" from Tom's suggestions.

46. A Tijuana Bible

47. Some Weirdo
I have a complete run.

48. An Array Of Comics In Various Non-Superhero Genres
This is really most of my comics...

49. An Editorial Cartoonist's Collection or Two
50. A Few Collections From New Yorker Cartoonists

Some of the items on this list I've just never really been interested in getting (Pogo), some I'd love to get (Yummy Fur), and some I think I may never get for some reason or another (a run of strips I've clipped for example, since most strips it seems are published online more than in papers anymore). Plus, generally, RAW is so dang expensive!

However, I could definitely see myself getting a lot of more the things on this list in the next 10 years...

FRIDAY

Left Savannah at around 5AM on Friday morning. A pretty uneventful road trip, but we got to see the mysterious SOUTH OF THE BORDER hideously hilarious theme road stop. Unfortunately it was closed when we arrived there and on our way back home.

On the way to the hotel we ate cornish hens and pizza. We arrived at the hotel around 4pm. Our room was ready and check in was easy. They ended up giving us double beds even though they said before we would only get a king. Saw Chris Schweizer hanging out in the lobby and later at the con mixer. Brought our stuff in and soon they brought the mini-fridge for our room!

Went down later to the convention hall for the opening mixer. The badges were late so we decided to come back later since the mixer was not our thing. On the way back from the mixer room, saw JLJ and Cory arrive since their plane was delayed. We arrived back at our hotel room and used a table in the room to set up our table layout and make sure everything would fit. We taped together our signs and made a makeshift box for Amanda's stuff to sit on top of.

When we came back to the mixer area later, they gave us our badges and a ticket that I guess must have been a drink ticket, but we had no idea what it was. Saw JLJ and crew go into the mixer, but having decided it wasn't for us, we went back upstairs.

Later, we just sat in the room and watched some TV and rested up. I hadn't slept at all since about 9PM on Thursday, so I just crashed.

SATURDAY

First day of the con! It didn't take us long to set up. Things went pretty smoothly. We eventually ended up swapping spots with our table-mates since our sign was completely obscuring them.

After we set up I went over to the Oni Press table to help out and get my Festering Romance previews and pins they had made for me. I met Cory and then I opened and broke down boxes of comics. James and my previews were in their room and they came down later. Hope and Mal were across the aisle from Oni's table, so I met Hope and gave her my fanart, got a copy of Chiggers from her, and met Mal. Once the boxes were unpacked, I grabbed some of my previews and pins and went back to my table. On the way, I handed out some of the previews to Pranas & crew. Throughout this entire day I would make my way back to Oni's table to get more previews to restock our supply. I think we gave away most of the previews and pins, and I have no idea how many were taken from the Oni Table since I wasn't really keeping track of it.

Our table location was not so good in my opinion, and we didn't get a lot of traffic. It was hard to get people to come over to this very quiet nook on the outskirts of the convention floor, and when people would actually come over, it was hard to get them to stay. There would be long periods of time where we would get no convention goers at all since no one would turn the corner to pass by us. Even the table Fantagraphics had for their special guests right across from us didn't look like it got much traffic and I didn't see many people go up to them at all.

The people on the other side of the table seemed to be doing pretty well though, so it made me a bit self-conscious. On they way back from walking around the floor, I came around from the entrance side to see what things looked like to a "passerby." The other sides of the table space were very easily visible from the entrance (our 3 tables were shaped like a "U" and we were on one of the sides of the U), but once you kept walking to where our side would be visible, it was like a black hole or empty void or something, and I probably wouldn't have ever visited the booth if I wasn't situated there. In fact, there were many places like this in the convention center that I just missed even though I tried to weave through the entire thing to see all the tables. I know there were a few tables I missed in the corners of the room and never visited once on both days of the con.

We did manage to make a few sales though, so not all was lost. Definitely next year though, I'm going to try to be placed next to my publisher so I'm not banished to the outskirts of the con again! I want to get a bigger table anyway for next year so I can sell some original art...

Anyway, luckily, we managed to give away all of the Festering Romance previews in spite of low traffic. They were all gone by about 5pm, leaving none for the rest of the show or the next day, but we still had a few pins. Later in the hotel room I would find about 5 previews that I had brought in my bag for trade, but these I decided to keep and give to friends since I hadn't saved any for myself and regretted it.

That night, most of my spending money was gone (Ganzfeld 6 + Fuzz & Pluck book + Yeast Hoist) so we tried to find a Bank of America ATM. We thought we saw one coming down, so we walked up the highway to find it. Turns out it was REALLY far away, and we never made it to it and turned around to go back to the hotel, thinking we could just use the hotel ATM in the morning. We found our way over to a restaurant area near the hotel and ate at a Chili's. I had the chicken fried steak plate. I hadn't eaten anything all day but my morning bagel + sandwich, so I was exhausted by this time and crashed soon after getting back to the hotel room. Before we went to bed though, we got some stuff ready to load into the car so things wouldn't be so hectic by checkout time tomorrow.

SUNDAY

I woke up early and got ready to talk to James about my comic pages at 10am. Before I went to see James though, we wanted to go to the ATM, but the hotel one was out of order. Luckily, there actually was a Bank of America nearby and we walked over and back just in time to make my appointment with James. When I arrived at their room James looked sleepy and Cory & Chris were getting ready for the day. James took his time and looked over all of my pages and made some suggestions, but none I had a problem with really. It was good to talk to him about the format of the book, the state of sales in bookstores & direct market, and future projects. I hadn't really talked to him and gotten his advice in months, so it was a real relief to actually have him in front of me and look over everything. I almost forgot my portfolio case in their room though, so I had to hurry back to get it.

When I got back to our hotel room, Kyle & Amanda had already taken some stuff down to the car. We took some more stuff to the car and when we got back, I called the front desk to check out of the room. I checked out and then we got the rest of the stuff and put it in the car and wheeled the con stuff down to our table and set up.

Sunday was no better in terms of floor traffic towards our table. We were able to get rid of the rest of the Festering Romance pins though and made some sales of a few items that hadn't sold the day before. Things seemed a lot slower in general. We all made a few more passes down the aisles at the con. I bought a bunch of books and then picked up my comp books from Oni. I was a bit embarrassed by the large stack I picked up at Oni's booth, but but... they told me I could take what I wanted?! Spent the rest of the day just hanging at the table and looking around a bit more when we switched shifts. It's weird that we looked around so much and I still know I missed a bunch of those out of the way tables.

We decided to leave a bit early since things weren't picking up at the end of the con. We left about 1/2 an hour early and got back on the road. We got some Arby's before we left the hotel area. Chicken bacon + swissssss!

I tried to stay up for the ride back, but for some reason the con was just really exhausting and I fell asleep a few hours in. I got Kyle to stay up to help Amanda who was driving stay up. We got back around 4am and picked up our cat from our friend who was watching her. Of course, our cat snubbed us since we were gone for days! Our friend said she hadn't eaten much since we left her (not even a whole bowl of food the entire time). Once we got her back home she started eating and seemed happier.

Stayed up for a bit and read comics... went to bed. Slept most of Monday after depositing checks, dropping off money, and getting Sakura's take-out. Don't know why I was so tired.

Here's some pics of what I picked up:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fridgewithfeet/2921005631/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fridgewithfeet/2921005641/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fridgewithfeet/2921005635/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fridgewithfeet/2921005645/in/photostream/


Although things weren't super-exciting, I'm looking forward to SPX next year. None of us had been to SPX before, and I had never been an exhibitor before, so we learned a lot and saw a lot of great stuff that gave us ideas for next year. It was definitely a good experience overall and I'm glad we went despite all the complications that would have halted our going. Amanda and Kyle were good table mates and we never argued once about anything.

I'm sure I'll have to go to many conventions later in my life, so SPX was a pretty good con to start out at as an exhibitor. While things did get a bit busy in the convention center, it was nothing like SDCC. Thanks to everyone who came by our table and look forward to seeing us next year!

Ok, forgot to mention that at SPX on Saturday I was the first convention-goer to see the new Kramers Ergot 7! They had the unbound proof at the Buenaventura table and had to pull out the giant thing to show us. After we looked through it, I bet it didn't leave the table for a long time as more and more people came up and were mesmerized by it. Every time I passed by the table that day it was still on the table enchanting some new viewer.

Now now, I know the thing is going to be expensive, but... Man, not only is it HUGE (old Sunday comic sized), but everything looks so AWESOME! I didn't really stop to read all the comics all the way through because I want it to be more of a surprise when I get it in the mail, but let me tell you, there are so many great artists in this book, there is no question of the quality. The book is going to be so so good. It got me really excited to get it.

The guy at the table said the book got postponed to about December. And working on Kramers Ergot 7 pushed the reprint of 4 to next year. Well, y'know... at least one Kramers is coming out this year! Check out the Amazon.com info on the book. It has more specifics on artists and size. Get excited!